Herbert L. Clarke

Herbert L. Clarke

Herbert Lincoln Clarke (September 12, 1867–January 30, 1945) was a well-known American cornet player, feature soloist, bandmaster, and composer.

Clarke’s legacy includes composing a portion of the standard repetoir for the instrument, many recordings, as well as a seminal school of playing which emphasized not only technical aptitude, but also increased warmth and lyricism of tone. He also produced several method books that are still used by brass students to this day.

Biography

Clarke was born in Woburn, Massachusetts in 1867. The son of composer and organist William Clarke, Herbert's family moved often to accommodate William's work engagements, from Massachusetts to Ohio, to Indiana, back to Massachusetts, and finally to Toronto in 1880.

Clarke's early musical instruction had been on the violin; by 1881, he was a second violinist in the Toronto Philharmonic Society. However, according to his autobiography, one of the formative moments in his musical upbringing was attending a concert of D. W. Reeves' American Band of Providence, Rhode Island at the Horticultural Pavilion in Toronto in 1881, and hearing Bowen R. Church play a cornet solo. He subsequently began practicing his brother's cornet and took a chair as a cornetist in the Queen’s Own Rifle band in 1882, in order to obtain his own government-issue cornet on which to practice.

Between 1884, when he graduated from high school, and 1887, Clarke drifted between playing both viola and second cornet (when required) in the pit orchestra of English's Opera House in Indianapolis, where his family had moved; working (unhappily) at the John Kay store in Toronto, while playing second chair cornetist with the Queens’s Own; and playing at the Ontario Beach lake resort in the summer. He had joined the Queen's Own at the age of 14 (even though the legal age was 18), in order to obtain his first Cornet, a band owned Curtois. In Indianapolis he would finally buy his own horn, a Boston 3-star cornet. It was with the When Clothing Store Band that in 1886 Clarke won a solo cornet contest and received a one-of-a-kind pocket cornet made by the famous instrument maker, Henry Diston, which can be seen at the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was in 1887 that he joined the Citizen's Band of Toronto, under John Bayley, as the band's cornet soloist. He spent the next five years playing in and leading several bands around Toronto (the Taylor Safe Works Band, Heintzman Piano Company Band, Streetsville Ontario Band) and teaching viola at the Toronto Conservatory of Music (where he also played in the Toronto Conservatory String Quartet) and at the Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario. In September 1889 he married Elizabeth (Lizzie) Loudon, with whom he had two children: Vivian (Grace) in 1890 and James (Edward James Watkin) in 1892. In the spring of 1892, he left Canada once again, after successfully auditioning for the Patrick Gilmore Band, based in Boston.

In 1893, he joined John Philip Sousa’s Band as a cornet soloist. After playing at the Chicago World's Fair in the same year, he left to play with various other bands, continuing to do so over the next five years. During this period, he held temporary positions as second trumpet with the New York Philharmonic, and as principal trumpet in the Metropolitan Opera, for which he temporarily switched to trumpet. He also divorced Lizzie Loudon and married Lillian Bell Hause, with whom he had two more children, Ruby Bell and Herbert L. Clarke, Jr.

In 1898 he returned to Sousa's Band, with whom he toured extensively, and later became Sousa's assistant director, succeeding Arthur Pryor. After Pryor's departure from Sousa in 1903 to form his own concert band, Clarke conducted Sousa's Band in many recording sessions for the Victor Talking Machine Company. Furthermore, he spent time testing and developing instruments for Conn Instruments in Elkhart, Indiana, and making a considerable number of solo recordings for Victor, Edison, Columbia, and finally Brunswick. He resigned from Sousa's band in September 1917 and returned to Canada to lead the Anglo-Canadian Leather Company Band in Huntsville, Ontario from 1918 to 1923. During this time he performed very little, instead focusing his efforts not only on conducting, but also composition, and setting up his own school of cornet playing in Chicago.

In 1923, he moved to Long Beach, California due to his wife's health and conducted the Long Beach Municipal Band until 1943. In April 1934, he was elected President of the American Bandmasters Association. From 1936 until his death in 1945, he developed a friendship with and gave private lessons to Claude Gordon. His ashes were interred at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., near the gravesite of John Philip Sousa. His papers and memorabilia are held at the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Notable works

Solo cornet compositions

Clarke composed over 50 solos for cornet, many of which have experienced several editions. Here are his most famous pieces, with the date of the earliest publication included.

• Bride of the Waves (1904)
• Sounds from the Hudson (1904)
• Caprice Brilliante (1908)
• Southern Cross (1911)
• The Carnival of Venice (1912)
• Sounds from the Hudson (Valse Brilliante) (1914)
• The Debutante (1917)
• Stars in a Velvety Sky (1919)
• From the Shores of the Mighty Pacific
• The Maid of the Mist

Cornet and Trombone

• Cousins (1904)
• Side Partners

Cornet methods

• Elementary Studies (1909)
• Technical Studies (1912)
• Characteristic Studies (1915)
• Setting Up Drills (1929)

Prose

• How I Became A Cornetist (1934): an autobiography

External links

• Biography from Library and Archives Canada, which was the source for much of the information in this article.
• An extremely detailed biography from 4barsrest.com, an online brass band resource.
• How I Became a Cornetist text
• Clarke's Technical Studies, then and now by Jeff Purtle
• Claude Gordon and Herbert L. Clarke and Their Teaching by Jeff Purtle, published December 2008 in The Brass Herald
• Cornet Soloist Recording
• Discography of Herbert L. Clarke on Victor Records from the Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings (EDVR)

Resources

• Clarke, Herbert L. How I became a Cornetist. St. Louis: Joseph L. Huber, 1934. Reprint, Kenosha: G. Leblanc Corporation, 1973.
• LP Record: Herbert L. Clarke with Sousa's Band and the Victor Orchestra, Jacket Notes by Gerald R. Endsley, Crystal Records, Sedro Woolley, Washington, 1979